Use a single source for your Data with the AEC Collection

BIM discussions are often about the big picture and can sometimes seem a little over complex for the day to day work of the Engineer. So, to address this, let's take a quick look at connected data. One big risk in an Infrastructure project is making a decision based on old or out of date data. Therefore procuring and using the same piece of data in a whole host of applications makes sense and reduces your risk.

First, in this example let's get some streetlight data for the area we are working in. If you work for a council or a private company with a spatial database, you can just connect directly to your database. If you don’t then you can download the data, which for the UK can be done here. You can search for a whole host of information required for most Infrastructure projects.

When you have your data, you can connect to it directly using the FDO function of AutoCAD Civil 3D, Map 3D and Infraworks.

For database users, any changes in the data will be reflected directly in your software. For those of you that download the data, make sure it is available for everyone involved in the project. If it isn’t already a spatial file then convert it so that everyone can see it, as well as any changes anyone makes.